When you come up with characters like Meat Boy and Isaac, do you initially visualize them as more complex and even realistic in design, or are they conceived as very simple and cartoonish characters from the start? Like, did you ever imagine Meat Boy to actually look like an anatomically accurate human boy with exposed, bloody muscle and tissue?

meat boy was designed around a red cube, so he was actually much less detailed than he was in SMB when he started.. it was just a cube with black eyes.

i usually just come up with a basic style, a rough idea of how the game is going to look, then design characters around that style. im a cartoonist so i rarely think of characters as realistic ever.